Aggression By Progression, Putin's Game of Chess With the West

Russia is famous for domes. What is in Putin's own "dome"?

2015

By the second month of 2015, Putin had regular army units of his military fighting alongside the separatists trying to seize control of a major Ukrainian transportation hub.

While sanctions, and seemingly bottomless oil prices were severely straining Russia, discredited Putin was counting on military glory to refurbish his domestic image.

Today's news was planned yesterday....or well before.

Russian dictator Putin bit off and swallowed, even digested the Crimea, partly out of frustration that the money and the favors he had lavished on his Ukrainian puppet had collapsed in the face of Ukrainian unrest at the graft and ineptitude of his puppet.

When that morsel had been celebrated and his controlled press had stirred up Russian nationalism and elevated Putin to his desired role of national hero, the emboldened Putin rested for only a brief cup of tea from his samovar and plotted his next move: Eastern Ukraine.

With Russian "volunteers" similar to our U. S. General Chennault's "Flying Tigers" of World War II fame, Putin engineered an illegal break away vote in Eastern Ukraine among Ukraine's Russian speaking citizens and began arming the Russian "volunteers" and the separatists for Ukraine's counter move.

In pain from the brief "sunburn" of one of his provided antiaircraft weapons downing a commercial airliner with 298 innocent passengers and crew members aboard, he scrambled first to put out the unbelievable misinformation that the plane had simply crashed on its own, and then, assured that the Russian missile launcher was safely withdrawn back to Russia, continued pushing sophisticated weapons across the Ukrainian border to his "volunteers" and separatists.

When the Ukrainian people voted a defiant new president into office, pledged to retake even the Crimea, Putin encouraged the soon retreating "volunteers" and separatists with assurances that even more help was on the way.

By the middle of November 2014, after a humiliation at the G20 Summit, and his early departure from the Summit, Putin's military was observed beefing up its forces, both in numbers and sophistication on both sides of the Russian border of eastern Ukraine and Russia, despite a previously agreed to cease fire agreement.

Aggression by progression was continuing at a heightened pace.

Besides more and varied weapons, he had previously engineered "a humanitarian convoy" to "sustain the suffering populace" in the embattled Ukrainian cities of Luhansk and Donetsk.. Making a deal which he soon defaulted on with the International Red Cross, Putin sent the convoy of trucks illegally across from Russia into Ukrainia and on to Luhansk with the so-called "humanitarian supplies" (the vast majority of which had not been checked either by the IRC or Ukrainian border administrators) on the excuse that the supplies would perish, if not sent immediately once Putin reached his self-appointed deadline.

That had left the next move with options for Putin. He could claim that Ukrainians fired on his Russian "goodwill trucks" in something tantamount to what he might claim to be an act of war, or he could simply cheer himself for resupplying his "volunteers" and separatists, causing a lull in the fighting while they regrouped with whatever new supplies he and the convoy had provided for that still hot battlefield, or he could use the same "humanitarian" claim as it appeared he was doing in November to try to justify sending in a Russian military "relief column" to seal the separation and absorption of his next "tasty tidbit", eastern Ukraine.

When the Ukraine celebrated Ukrainian Independence Day, Putin's "volunteers" and separatists waved their own independence flags and paraded Ukrainian government prisoners through a public square in Donetsk as proof of separatist valor and their "wish" to be free from control by the legitimate Ukrainian Government in Kiev.

At that time, back on the golf course in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, a vacationing American President Obama was faced with choosing which economic sanctions he could tickle the Russian Bear with that time. which his nervous European allies would find acceptable.

Later, Obama, NATO, and U. S. allies were still talking about even further sanctions in the face of Putin's violations of the cease fire agreement and his latest confrontations with Kiev and NATO, while the Baltic States and Poland still feared they might be Putin's next morsels.

By then, Putin could well have pulled off a military invasion of the Ukraine, and had his land grab dessert with a glass of vodka and a declaration of "Checkmate!"

4 comments

As the West is attacking Russian borders, in what way do you make sense? Is Ukraine close to Russia or the USA? We already dismantled parts of Russia. Ukraine, Chechnya, Azerbaijan, Armenia are our doing or are you going to deny it?

What about the Crimean referendum that unanimously asserted their attachment to Russia? Which country is Russia attacking? Which countries are attacked at the moment by the US?

Perspycacious 2 years ago from Today's America and The World Beyond Author

maxoxam41 - This is the great thing about a free society and HubPages in particular, namely free speech and the opportunity for fresh perspectives. There is usually another side to the story.

In rebuttal may I ask you to define which "Russian borders" you assert the West is "attacking"? If, as it appears, you are referring to the former parts of the old Soviet Union which are no longer part of the modern state of Russia, you would be wrong to call their borders as being still "Russian borders"....though Putin certainly wishes they were. When you say "We already dismantled" you mean the Russian people and quite apparently consider yourself one of them, though your profile says you are, I believe, writing from America. As for your assertion that "the Crimean referendum " was unanimous, I will agree that it was "unanimous" in the same sense that past elections in the former Soviet Union were "unanimous" under the former Russian dictators who not only stifled dissent (as Putin does now) but sent dissenters off to the gulags in Siberia....or worse.

Dictators form their own natural club, and that explains Putin's preventing the United Nations Security Council from performing its function in the tragic, ongoing civil war in Syria. Putin's obstruction has given rise to those assassins and murderers who call themselves the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria". Yes, America is attacking them, and good riddance to those who commit genocide in the 21st Century just as the Assyrians did in the days of Hezekiah in 800 B.C.. Civilized people today also condemn those who carry out any form of terrorism such as some of the "heroic" separatists in the eastern areas of Ukraine have been guilty of doing, not counting the 298 innocent women, children, and other passengers of the commercial airliner they shot down.

I don't imagine Putin, much to his shame, plans to punish them for that crime, but I am reasonably sure he knows who they are and where they are.

It is hard to defend dictators, but you made an attempt, and I guess that counts for something. Thanks.

Perspycacious 2 years ago from Today's America and The World Beyond Author

Updated today, November 18, 2014.

Perspycacious 22 months ago from Today's America and The World Beyond Author